Stack Overflow

Description

Rachel Botsman:

'Stack Overflow reports more than 24 million unique visitors a month and around 5,500 questions are submitted to the site every day.

Voting on and editing questions are just two ways in which users can earn reputation points on Stack Overflow. "Reputation is earned by convincing your peers that you know what you are talking about," Spolsky says. "The reason why the site is 100 per cent spam-free and that around 80 per cent of all questions get answered is entirely a function of the community. The way we do that is as you earn more reputation points, you get more powers on the site."

Shortly after the site launched, Atwood and Spolsky heard that programmers were putting their Stack Overflow reputation scores on their CVs, and headhunters were searching the platform for developers with specific skills. "A CV tells you what schools they went to, what companies they worked for and how well they did on a standardised test when they were teenagers," Spolsky explains. "But if you read the writings of someone on Stack Overflow, you immediately know if they are a skilled programmer or not." In February 2011, Stack Overflow launched Careers 2.0, an invitation-only job board where companies can find skilled programmers.

Stack Overflow demonstrates how a person's reputation score created in one community is starting to have value beyond the environments where it was built. By answering questions in an expert forum, you create more opportunities to find a better job." (http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/09/features/welcome-to-the-new-reputation-economy?)